Frequently Asked Questions

Each practice will send a list of eligible patients NHS numbers to our secure NHS Mail inbox. iPLATO will then facilitate the ongoing extraction of client demographic data via the practice clinical system phonebook, for which the data will be minimised as far as possible.

iPLATO will use the Personal Demographics Service (PDS) to extract the mobile numbers of eligible patients, for which the data will be minimised as far as possible. This ensures we have the most up to date information at all times.

A generic read-code will be applied for the failed messages such as;

• Readcode v2 - 9Nj8
• Readcode v3 - Xaa2M
• SNOMED - 864231000000108

The content of this message will be recorded, however we suggest a clinical search is created to identify patients eligible for Bowel Screening with the above failed codes.

If your surgery regularly identify patients with failed messages the above would not be required as these would be captured routinely.

Yes, read-codes will be added to the patient record if the practice has one of the three main clinical systems (EMIS Web, SystmOne or Vision).

• Snomed: 279991000000102
  Term: Short message service text message sent to patient
  Text: Bowel screening SMS 

• Readcode v2: 9N3G 
  Term: SMS text message sent to patient 
  Text: Bowel screening SMS
• Readcode v3: XaMil 
  Term: SMS (short message service) text message sent to patient 
  Text: Bowel screening SMS 

If there are any issues or queries, you may email us at hub@iplato.com or call 020 3743 0060 and ask for the Hub Project Delivery team.

After the practice signs the consent form they will need to provide a list of eligible patients NHS numbers to our secure NHS mail inbox. Some practices will require further set up, which takes roughly 5 minutes over the phone. Lastly, once the patient has completed their NHS Health Check and blood test, the practice will need to review the results and calculate the patients QRisk.

As there is no “accreditation” of GDPR compliance, we can only advise that we have worked with our legal specialists, Data Protection Officer, and NHS England to ensure that iPLATO Healthcare are 100% GDPR compliant in line with legislation.

iPLATO meets all requirements for Data Protection and DS&P (Information Governance) and is trusted by customers across the UK to handle, securely 21.5 million clients.

Please see below the Data Sharing Agreements, Data Processing Agreement and Terms in place:

https://www.pcm.nhs.uk/pcm_tc.php

https://www.iplato.com/dpa.pdf

It is not necessary to collect express consent from clients to communicate with them. GDPR does not regulate communication with clients, instead it is about the legal basis to process an individual’s data and their rights. In the healthcare space, providers use their “public task” legal basis to process client data for the provision of healthcare. Clients can then express their preferences not to be communicated via particular means and this is normally common practice in surgeries.

For more on how GDPR affects client messaging in the healthcare industry: https://mailchi.mp/8dda68c0a4ac/countdown-to-gdpr-4-things-you-need-to-know